After being given a Hornby Networker shell by a mate on Friday, yesterday I got back to work on my 325 conversion.

First off I repeated the process removing the end, side and roof detail on the other 3 doner coaches. With that completed the next step was to replace the glazing strips, I had originally planned to use plasticard for this (thinking it would be a more consistent base for paint than the clear strips), but when taking the dimensions off the Hornby strip I realised that it actually was made to the profile of the coach (and as such required reusing the Hornby window strip.) This was cut into 3 lengths and then glued to the coach side with a gap between them in the location of the doors.

With that done the next step should have been adding the doors and corridor connection recess, however I was a little impatient (and for once it looks like that impatience has paid off). the process was a simple one, cutting just behind the cab door on the new cabs and at the appropriate place on the coach. However once you try to match the two parts up you realise that there is a pretty significant difference in profile on the lower coach side (would require approximately 1mm of materiel removing along the length of the coach to get it to match the cab profile.)

So this then got me thinking about alternative methods,

- The first option is to modify the cab to match the coaches, I think that if you cut back the moulding to remove the cab doors then glued to the coach and filed the final 10mm of coach side to taper to the cab front (then added the door detail) would blend the cab into the coach.

- Knowing that people have had success converting a Bratchel kit I broke the cab off one of my 456s and test fitted the networker cab to that. Here the side profile is closer (but still there is a difference of just over .5mm at the base) this is compounded by the Bratchel body being slightly wider than the Networker cab. I dont really want to pay upwards of ??100 for a kit to convert thats still going to require major work. However I then got thinking about the 456, it dosnt fit with my 3rd rail plans, and the 2nd unit still requires a scratch built underframe and cabs to correct the rubbish that came with the kit. One option would be to convert this to built the 2 driving coaches, and use with a pair of converted mk3s for the centre coaches.

- While thinking over the bratchel option I started looking at the networker shell again, thinking that at least the cab will be a direct match with it. I believe that the body is a bit long for this application (by about 6mm or so) so it would need to be shortened. theres also a potential problem with the inner ends, which lack the taper in on the sides that the prototype have, and are a lot flatter than the mk3/bratchel (though I'm not too sure which the prototype matches, as the only end on photo I have found does look very flat (plus has the other details matching the networker.)

The big problem here will be sourcing the required components, I already need one more body (along with the one I have) to provide inner ends for a 465, in order to do a 325 I would require 6 bodies (4 forming the coaches, and 2 extras to get the additional inner ends that would be required.) I suppose that this could potentially be reduced slightly by casting the inner end, but I think the extra effort wouldn't be worth the cost saving.

A couple of years back there were always hundreds of networker shells on Ebay, not to mention the likes of Model Spairs et al. now they appear to be a lot more scarce.

- The final 2 options are probably a bit less viable, but worthy of consideration none the less. First there is the simple give up, the units would almost certainly never be seen on my planned layout, let alone be a common sight. So it wouln't be any real loss if I gave up on the idea. The other rejected option was to etch sides/roof/end along with the Hornby cab, While this would work nicely, it would be much too high cost (particularly allowing for the number of dud test etches before getting the profile right!), and at the end of the day is too much work for something thats not really needed.